Doubtful Friends
by Momerath
Summary: Post-Neverland, Jakes and Strange are left to pick up the pieces


**Doubtful Friends, chapter one **

My first Endeavour fic. Post-Neverland. It's taken me ages to post, but I've been really enjoying the other stories here so thought I'd add mine! Hope you enjoy :)

A doubtful friend is worse than a certain enemy. Let a man be one thing or the other, and we then know how to meet him. - Aesop

xxx

Jakes was quite content to let the banging on his door continue. It had woken him, he was lying on the bed, fully clothed, sweaty, itchy, with an absolutely skull-crushing headache, his mouth dry and stale, and a wave of nausea increasing with each passing second of consciousness. It was still dark outside. He'd been woken in the middle of the worst of the hangover, and he wasn't sure he could make it to the door if he'd wanted to.

The banging continued. Jakes rolled over and nearly threw up in his bed.

"_DS Jakes_!" Bang. Bang. _"Sir_!"

The voice was vaguely familiar. Jakes shrugged off his blazer, and found a cooler side of the pillow. He wished he had water nearby. He shut his eyes, but still had the uncomfortable sensation of the room spinning beyond his closed lids. He swallowed hard as his stomach lurched. This hangover was a humdinger, all right, and the key to survival was to go back to sleep and wake up nearer to five o'clock in the afternoon.

"_Sir_!"

He was drifting back to sleep, every part of his painful body willed it, regardless of the noise.

There was an altercation now in the corridor, clearly a neighbour wasn't as single-mindedly in quest of sleep as Jakes and had been disturbed.

There was more knocking, quieter now, and the voice said, clearly but not shouting, through the thin wooden door. "DS Jakes, sir, DI Thursday's been shot. And Morse's been arrested."

Jakes opened his eyes.

xxx

Jakes knew he was a proper state anyway, but PC Strange's reaction when he opened the door confirmed it. Strange looked like he was wondering if he'd accidentally woken up a vagrant. Jakes was leaning heavily on the doorframe for essential support, swallowing down the nausea, as the room spun and pain drilled in a spot just above his left eye. "What?" he said, or tried to say, his throat was bone dry and scratchy, so it barely made it above a whisper. He was uncomfortably close to vomiting on Strange's shoes. Strange's wide, friendly face was a picture of concern and, receiving the message that Strange wasn't going to leave him alone to die as he hoped, Jakes opened the door a little wider.

Strange edged by him, probably too close for comfort to his dirty, sweaty, rumpled clothes, and headed for the kitchenette, pouring a glass of water. He gave it to Jakes, who took it as eagerly as if it were an elixir of life, collapsing back onto the bed. "The DI and Morse went to Blenheim Vale. The DI was shot. And County have collared Morse."

Jakes took a long draught of cooling water, handed it wordlessly to Strange for a refill, who obliged, and then said, as he drank the second glass. "Is he dead?"

"Not the last I heard, but it's bad, it's very bad, the PC at the Radcliffe says."

All right. Everything apart from death is recoverable. He handed the glass to Strange, who refilled it and gave it back. He drank that too, and his body slowly responded to the hydration, his skin felt less like scorched paper. The information gradually began sinking in, to his mystification. "They arrested Morse for shooting the DI?" he said, trying not to laugh. This was clearly lunacy. Maybe even a dream, except the hangover was all too real. The nausea was still bad, but subsiding, but the headache was expanding. He held his head with his free hand, and kept drinking the water.

"No sir. For murdering Standish."

Jakes lifted his head and stared at Strange, who took the glass from his unresisting hand and refilled it. "Morse has been arrested for _murdering Standish? _Standish is dead?"

"Yes sir."

Jakes rubbed his temples. "So who shot Thursday?"

"I don't know. County are playing their cards close to their chest, they aren't talking to City. That's why I can came to find you. It was a bloodbath out at Blenheim Vale." Strange said, absently. He looked exhausted.

Jakes couldn't bear to sit up anymore, but even lying on his back with his eyes closed, the room went on spinning behind his closed lids. It was a bloodbath out at Blenheim Vale. No shit.

"Who else?"

"ACC Deare and the doctor's daughter. Both dead at Blenheim Vale. The doc is dead at his house." 

Ghosts of the past danced in front of his spinning world, and pounding head. He couldn't answer for a moment. These were people he'd spent years deliberately not thinking about, to the extent that he'd half believed them non-existent and now they wouldn't leave him alone, grabbing him from the cold recesses of memory like the undead. And yet now they were back, they really were dead. It was all too much for his poor, addled brain.

"Are you asleep?" Strange asked, anxiously.

Jakes groaned. "Yes, that's all sent me off like a baby." He was beginning to be able to follow the story, albeit above the roar of a really enormous headache. He still lay motionless, eyes closed and talking cautiously, for fear of being drowned in another wave of nausea.

"I'm not really sure what County has. I...I just came and tried to find you right away. You were out, before though. So I went looking for you, but when I came back you were here."

What the bloody hell do you want me to do about it, can't you see I'm dying? Is what he thought, but instead he said: "Do you know what time Standish was killed?"

"No idea. Why?"

"I saw Morse last night. He came to find me in the Eagle, to get me to go out to Blenheim Vale. I can't remember what time, but the landlord might remember." Which is more than Jakes could. If someone had held a gun to his head, he couldn't have told Strange where he'd gone between the Eagle and home. Down to the river, maybe, judging by the mud on his shoes.

"He asked you to go too?" reflected Strange. "He asked me to go. He gave me this, he said 'it's all in there'." He threw Jakes a newspaper, Jakes opened his eyes to glance at it but the small letters set off a cacophony in his aching head, so he put it to one side.

"I couldn't go," he murmured. Strange nodded, but Jakes knew he didn't really understand, because how could he? Jakes was scared, not of losing face with the superiors, like Strange was. He wasn't scare of that. He was scared of himself, and he was terrified of Blenheim Vale. He couldn't have gone. And although now he was thinking, what if I had? He knew he couldn't play that game. In that moment, when Morse asked him, he couldn't go, and he couldn't judge himself harshly for that. The years of his life subsequent to Blenheim Vale had taught him that to second guess yourself, took you to madness. He shut his eyes again.

"What did he say about the newspaper?"

"He said Chard and Deare were in it together, in covering up what had gone on up at the Blenheim Vale. You know...What was done to those poor boys."

"Chard?" repeated Jakes, faintly. Chard, who he passed the time of day with. This wave of nausea had nothing to do with his hangover.

We've got the chance to bury them all, Morse had said.

All right. Focus. This was a nightmare. There was nothing tolerable about this. It couldn't get much worse. But it was happening, and it couldn't be stopped, it was on Jakes' desk now. He couldn't just sleep this situation off. It was time to face up to the fact this was going to be a complete horror show, and power through.

He sat up, delicately, and opened his eyes. "I need to shower," he said clearly, "and I need to be sick. And then we're going to sort this out."

Strange looked relieved. "Yes, sir," he said.


End file.
